Mobile

Can iOS Developers Move Beyond SQL?

By Adrian Bridgwater, September 18, 2013

McObject eXtremeDB embedded DBMS for iOS developers

McObject has announced eXtremeDB’s immediate availability on Apple's iOS mobile platform. The In-Memory Database System (IMDS) and related product family now boasts "specialized" features such as support for efficient location-based lookups and a tiny "footprint" that avoids monopolizing on-device hardware resources.

"Adoption of iPhones, iPads, and related Apple devices has soared past the half billion mark, driven to a large extent by consumers' delight with the increasingly sophisticated available software. The eXtremeDB embedded database system meets the need for fast, highly efficient data management to support advanced features in iOS mobile apps," McObject CEO Steve Graves said.

McObject points out that while iOS developers write their code in the Objective super-set language, most data management in iOS apps is accomplished in SQL, a database programming language with "inherent performance" limitations.

McObject says its eXtremeDB enables iOS developers to move beyond SQL. This software is used in millions of media players and set-top boxes worldwide to index, sort, and retrieve stored content. "Consumer electronics manufacturers choose eXtremeDB in part for its fast, native C/C++ API," says the firm.

NOTE: This interface is navigational; that is, it consists of C functions embedded in the code work on the database one record at a time, navigating from record-to-record and between related record types through application logic.

"In contrast, SQL provides a higher level of abstraction to programmers by separating the database access language from the physical database implementation. SQL's abstraction is convenient, but comes at the cost of more processing overhead, plus reliance on an optimizer that will consider different ways to carry out a given command. eXtremeDB's native API stores data in exactly the form used by the application — C/C++ data structures — eliminating conversion to SQL format for storage in SQL tables," said Graves.

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